Friday, April 8, 2011

Violence among students in schools

A study by the Observatory on school violence showed that 11.7% of students are harassed at school. The ministry is implementing a parade.

Overall, students from ages 8 to 12 feel good about their school. But who said it was a pleasure for all? 11.7% of boys and girls live in a veritable hell on the playground, to the point of having nightmares at night and get going backwards. More than one in 10 students, in fact, suffer all kinds of harassment, abuse, violence, moral, physical and even sexual, even racketeering. This is shown by the study of the International Observatory on Violence in Schools , conducted from late 2009 to end 2010 with 12,326 students in 153 schools and funded by UNICEF .

Noelle, a girl died of harassment
Eric Debarbieux these amazing results presented Tuesday, March 29 at a press conference. What move the Minister of National Education, Luc Chatel, who decided to create a "Scientific Council against discrimination in schools" . Chaired by François Heran, a demographer, former director of the National Institute of Demographic Studies, the Council will rely in particular on the proposals of the Centre of Violence at school.

"According to the study, the phenomena of" victimization "are rather limited since almost nine in ten students (88.9%) report feeling" very well "or" fairly well "at school and more seven in ten say they are "never" abused or "very occasionally", says Agence France-Presse .

"They have always existed, " heads of Turks , wrote France-Soir , a child who, without knowing why, becomes the scapegoat of a group, class. " Europe1 and cite the example of the sad little Christmas, a girl of Haitian descent who died in force harassment. First there was racial abuse, racketeering and then finally chokes in the school yard: "I told him to defend himself," says the mother of Noelle . "Well, she was punished for defending herself and when she complained to her teachers, they answered him:" do not worry, we'll see it later. " A few days before her death she had told the victim of strangulation by another child. "She had a headache. We did not know why. She ended up falling into a coma. "

All kinds of harassment
The first stage of the violence is psychological. A child is a little different, for example, he stutters, is a bit too closed, or too wise during class, or an original or a different culture. This is sometimes enough for him to find marginalized. "Fluffy", "nerd", "rouquemoute" names for birds are not lacking in the playground (...) writes Le Parisien . "We knew qu'enfance does not mean innocence. One could doubt that primary schools are not sanctuaries Care Bears. " Le Figaro proves accurate: "In detail, a little over 16% of children respond to a decked bad name, 25% were abused and 14% have been rejected. "

The second stage, these are the blows delivered during interclass or racketeering between large and small who became his scapegoat. "For physical violence," continues Le Figaro , 17% have already been hit often or very often "tanbdis that" theft and extortion affecting less than 3% of students. "

Followed attacks apparently innocuous but sexual: 20% of students confide they were the subject of voyeurism to the toilet, 14% were forced to undress and 20% forced to kiss another child. Acts whose victims are both boys and girls.

New forms of violence
Dangerous games have emerged in the schoolyard, including the headscarf, this autostrangulation expected to cause strong sensations, or those of the aerosol, salad, silence or vicious circle. Very often it is the scapegoat who are the first victims and sometimes they die, as shown in this survey of TF1 .

Internet also excites the imagination of stalkers. "This phenomenon extends to new technology, says Europe1 : today at 8 years, some students settle their account with Facebook. " This confirms that the blog bigbrowser. Lemonde : "Another cause of depression (Youth) online harassment. (The agency) AP recalls the suicide of this 15 year old girl last year, harassed on Facebook. We also remember the suicide of a young American when his homosexuality was revealed on social networks.

7sur7.be tells his side of the hoax which was pitiful victim a young girl on the Internet: "The friends of a teen class will create a fake profile on Facebook and masculine pose as the lover of the girl. They are going to orchestrate the fake suicide fictional boy, accusing their comrade's death (...) The girl was devastated, decides to contact the family to offer condolences and apologize, but in vain. " After several weeks of guilt, the girl learns the truth: this silly game that destroyed was organized by her best friend.

School dropout, truancy, suicidal tendencies
Eric Debarbieux believes it must act quickly to help child victims of such harassment, "A survey of 50 adolescents who attempted suicide showed that all had experienced harassment at school," he says. "Child psychiatrists who inherit adolescent self-esteem have devastated already sounded the alarm," wrote Le Parisien , in an open letter in January to Luc Chatel. Which mandated the same Debarbieux to suggest avenues for prevention in a report to be presented April 12 and is expected to announce measures at national conference held in early May. "

"The authors discuss the consequences of repeated harassment, says his side Le Figaro : school dropout, truancy, loss of self-image, depressive tendencies and suicidaires.Une strong correlation also exists between the act of abusing his classmates during the years spent in school and that experience problems with the law as an adult. "

However, one should not conclude that these cases of harassment occur more in the peripheral problems: "This is another great teaching of the study, said Eric Debarbieux: there is no more harassment schools classified as "PTA" (educational priority, the more difficulty) than in normal schools. "

How to combat bullying?
"If teachers are alerted and trained harassment tends to decline, confirming in an interview with AFP Jean-Pierre Bellon, co-author of Harassment and bullying among students (1). Early sensitization is necessary "because it is a phenomenon that often arises in elementary school before structuring a teenager," he adds. "

On 26 January, a group composed of the particular child psychiatrist Marcel Rufo, the philosopher Edgar Morin and other intellectuals, anxious to see the development of bullying at school, sent an open letter to ministers of National Education, Health, social cohesion, but also to the Halde and the Children's Ombudsman. "We want to draw your attention to the issue of children harassed at school, abuse at the origin of the phenomena of" whipping boy "or" scapegoat. " We therefore take your instances to identify specific and concrete solutions to protect these kids and the entire educational community, "they write.

Eager to fight against this "school bullying (bullying at school), Minister Luc Chatel, chose the same day as the revelation of the study by UNICEF to announce the establishment of the Scientific Council of the cons discrimination at school. There is probably an emergency.